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The report discussed in the NYT is not new. I read the report about six weeks ago, and from personal experience it makes some sense. I would encourage leaders preparing to deploy to read it. This is why I’m disappointed that ISAF is refuting the report rather than learning from it. At least they appear to not be taking it seriously. If this is true, it is a mistake.

Granted, the sample was small and geographically limited. The sampling of US troops is even smaller than the sample of Afghans. So, yes, the report has limitations. It is less science than it is anecdotal… but as a combat advisor who has worked with Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), the report does carry the ring of truth. The NYT scarcely touches on the real point; the enemy is within… us. It turns out that most of the fratricidal murders that have occurred were not the work of insurgent infiltrators, but the work of very angry ANSF. It is easier to put more money into vetting ANSF recruits than it is to effectively deal with the real problem.

Our counterinsurgency manual lists a set of behaviors that are historically proven to be unsuccessful practices. One of those is a “low priority on quality advisors.” Army Special Forces have a selection process that is designed to weed out those who, among other things, are not suited to working with indigenous peoples. My own experience demonstrates what every other non-SF combat advisor knows; we were not selected based upon on any key criteria for what it takes to be a high quality advisor. We were warm bodies with the requisite military skill set and the requisite rank. Some didn’t even have those prerequisites; they simply had a pulse. There was no personality testing. There was no stress testing. There was no selection process. Individual team chiefs (those who actually had an opportunity and a pool to select from) sometimes made efforts to select a quality team… mostly based on records reviews and interviews, which are very limited in what they can tell a leader. It was a shot in the dark. Mostly, it has worked out. We are discussing what happens when it doesn’t.

Trends emerged. Guardsmen turned out to be particularly well-suited to advisor roles. This does not mean that Regular Army officers and NCO’s were never successful; there are lots of success stories. But, on the whole, the Guard is better suited to advisory roles. It is generally accepted that Guardsmen have more well-rounded experience based on their immersion in civilian culture. There is a lot there to be plumbed; another entire discussion could be had about what the reasons for this phenomenon are. At this point, suffice to say that it has been more than adequately demonstrated to those of us who have served in close relationships with ANSF that some people have absolutely no business being in proximity to Afghans. We have all seen them, Guard and Regular alike; they are a danger to themselves and others, and sometimes they have gotten people killed. The last several paragraphs address the advisor issue, but more and more American line troops, not trained as advisors, are coming into constant contact with ANSF.

These types of killings are not new, but there has been an increase. The article quotes the report’s author, Dr. Bordin, as stating that 16% of hostile Coalition deaths are attributable to these fratricidal murders. I don’t know if this is accurate, but any other problem, the resolution of which could result in 16% fewer casualties, would be attacked with vigor. Well, they are attacking… but they are attacking the statistically much less significant problem of preventing insurgent infiltrators. It appears that the problems that contribute to the majority of these events are being left to smolder, dismissed by officials. Those officials can smear the techniques, they can smear the language, but I’m here to tell you that the message makes sense to me and many other advisors, and it can be addressed just as the military addresses any other recognized source of injuries and deaths; command emphasis.

A few questions may come to mind. Why would a non-insurgent Afghan soldier or policeman decide to open fire on his own allies? The report indicates a number of reasons, key among them being issues related to respect. Profane language and behavior are cited.

Afghans do not use profanity in their language as a matter of course. In the American military, the use of profanity surpasses even the use of profanity in American culture in general (with the possible exception of gangsta rap). Use of the f-bomb is rampant in American movies. Profane name-calling is an art form. In Afghan culture, to insinuate even jokingly that a man has intimate relations with his mother is an offense so great that it may inspire lethal ire. Americans call each other “motherfuckers” all the time. I have witnessed American soldiers calling Afghans such things, or referring to an Afghan as such when discussing them with another Afghan. This then gets back to the Afghan so-referenced and a resentment is begun. This may seem a simple misunderstanding, but it has been known to have lethal consequences.

I’ve seen violence almost break out over cultural issues. I’ve heard Afghan soldiers make death threats against American soldiers because the American soldier made a statement about Afghan women. The American soldier who had been threatened saw hypocrisy in the anger. Afghans see American movies and the promiscuity depicted as a matter of course. They also see American porn. Afghan soldiers love American porn, and they view American women as loose. The American soldier had been listening to his Afghan counterparts talking about American women, became irritated and said that he wanted to see photos of naked Afghan women. That was all it took. It could have resulted in a killing, but the situation was diffused and the soldier was strongly admonished not to engage in such discussions with Afghans for any reason. He survived. Others have not.

Basically, the problem is akin to racism; ignorance and arrogance combine to form a sense of natural superiority that is difficult and sometimes impossible to overcome. Just as many do not suffer from such delusions, some do things that endanger themselves and others. We have a military culture that is not only fond of profanity, it is fond of judging one’s self in relation to others. Esprit d’ corps is often built upon inculcating the belief that the members of a given unit are somehow superior and more elite than members of another unit. Now, how is a young man who has been raised since he was at the tail end of his childhood to believe that this is how to judge others (especially those in uniform) supposed to suddenly suspend this value system because he is put into close daily contact with indigenous forces?

It is nigh on impossible. Some will have the personal characteristics to overcome it, but enough who cannot will make it into these close situations. Some leaders, even some commanders, will recognize the danger and take action. Enough do not, and there is no higher-level emphasis that this is a responsibility of leadership; to recognize and remove such threats from our own ranks. To do so leaves us even more short-handed than we appear to be on paper. To not do so leaves us open to up to 16% higher casualties.

Why has the rate of such incidents increased? What has changed? An emphasis on “partnering” with Afghan units and a move away from emphasizing advising/mentoring. The cited report indicates that ANSF had uniformly positive impressions of American advisors, such as ETT’s and PMT’s, and are less happy with American units more recently. American and Coalition regular units are being placed in close living and working situations with ANSF on a frequent basis. This is, overall, a good thing; even if the advising is being downplayed (generally, there is a mixture). However, since we have the immature and arrogant in our midst, there is a greater potential for dangerous situations to occur. They have, in fact.

Younger soldiers who have been in a strictly military environment since shortly after they graduated from high school have a greater tendency to be unable to adapt to the cultural differences between Afghans and Americans. They are more likely to blithely err in ways that are not intuitively dangerous to American youth. Add to this the small but significant enough number of officers and NCO’s who are unable to effectively work with ANSF and you have a recipe for isolated outbreaks of lethal violence among allies.

While cultural training has improved, it is spotty in its stress on language and gestures. Afghan cultural training often stresses not using the left hand to gesture and emphasizes never showing the soles of your feet. Well, Afghans will often wave with their left hand, especially if the right hand is busy… but they will never shake with it. They will offer the right forearm if the right hand is busy, wet or dirty. Afghans do not appreciate the carelessly rude or purposeful display of the sole of the foot, but they are not so sensitive that accidental or comfort-related moves that expose the sole are taken as an offense.

While making too much an issue of the left hand, offensive gestures and language are often overlooked. Afghans view profane language as very distasteful and ignorant (even if they are illiterate). Profane names are absolutely out and never acceptable. The thumbs-up used to be an offensive gesture, but because of its common American use, it is accepted. However, the American fist pump to the chest is the equivalent of flipping an Afghan the bird and is considered to be extremely offensive… but I’ve only seen one cultural trainer who actually explained this. It’s not just cultural training that can be improved, it’s also incorporating this knowledge into individual task training.

Recently, a National Guard unit was performing its pre-mobilization required individual task training. One of these tasks was “perform detainee operations.” The emphasis was on searching detainees. The trainers were well-rehearsed and professional, executing the task to the precise standards they were given; including how a male searches a female. Teaching male soldiers how to search females puts the idea in their heads that an American male soldier searching an Afghan female could under some bizarre circumstance be acceptable. It is never acceptable, ever (did I mention ever?). There are other ways to deal with the problem. Always. Our premobilization task training is not battle focused on the only battle these young men will serve in. We can adjust that. We can do better with tailoring our training to suit the combat environment, especially culturally.

Finally, a quote from an American officer emerges from the end of the article:

“In this culture, they shoot first, ask questions later,” said Lt. Col. David C. Simons, a spokesman for the training mission in Afghanistan. “Back in the States, if this happens a guy punches you and you walk away and hope you don’t get arrested. But here, you just hope you don’t get killed.”

Well, okay… but part of that is bullshit. Afghans do value human life, and it’s not “shoot first and ask questions later.” It’s a difference in what is worth taking life over. If you call an Afghan a “motherfucker” (just an example) and he actually understands you… as more and more of them do… you are taking your life and possibly those of your buddies into dangerous waters. Oh, and everyone has a weapon capable of ending life with the twitch of a finger. No, the questions do not need to be asked later. You have answered any question required to convince that man that you need to die based on every value he was raised with. In fact, his honor demands it. With all due respect to LTC Simons, he is a spokesman and does not appear to be an advisor. If it were shoot first and ask questions later, many more advisors would have died during the course of this war. I never walked around wondering if I was about to be shot by the Afghans I worked with. That’s a cowboy quote that is unhelpful in considering the problem. The view from Camp Eggers does not include the experience necessary to evaluate what is worth killing a man over in Afghanistan, but since he is actually in Afghanistan, it was a juicy quote that sounded ominous in the NYT. All I can say is, “Thank you, Sir.”

It’s stuff like that which makes young men go to Afghanistan fearing sudden death from any quarter. Being respectful when you are frightened is more difficult than having awareness of the cultural don’ts.

As noted, the report is not great science; but it still hits home. To ignore its findings is to continue to suffer unnecessary casualties. A recommendation to mitigate the risk is to encourage commanders and leaders in general to identify and remove from contact with Afghans any individuals who appear to lack the ability to adapt to working with ANSF. Just as each unit is mandated to have an Equal Opportunity (EO) officer or NCO to investigate and recommend action to mitigate issues of racism and sexism, a similar emphasis should be made to identify and remediate the risks of both soldiers and leaders who place their fellows at risk through imprudent language and behaviors. Education and training are helpful, but we have all seen that they are not enough. Some individuals simply will not adapt. Sometimes, in the immortal words of Offspring, “you gotta keep ‘em separated.”

If the end result is 16% fewer casualties, you tell me where the effort is a waste of time.

The previous posts described a lot of concepts and activities. Granted, that information alone isn’t going to enable anyone to fully execute a District Stability Matrix and perform any kind of program or operational design. It’s an outline, provided in hopes of improving publicly available knowledge of what counterinsurgency and stability operations are. All too often, COIN and stability are described in the few terms that have caught on in pop culture. They are trendy to use in the media, but the reality is misrepresented or mythologized. Misunderstanding of COIN is practically viral. This breeds a separation of the American people, and more than a few academics and think-tankers, from the reality of what is actually being attemted on the ground. COIN and stability operations are grinding, difficult tasks carried out, in the case of Afghanistan, in a land and among a people that appear to be very alien at first glance. Misconceptions hinged on such misunderstood but trendy terms as, “hearts and minds,” makes the whole endeavor unfathomable without a deeper understanding. It’s a big subject, so it’s not easily described in one posting.

With all of the previous posts tied together, what does this look like in practice? When we arrive in, say, a district in Afghanistan, how do we begin? There are a lot of factors that will determine where we start, such as what has already been done by our predecessors. Not every place is like Marjah, where the entire operation started with little or no GIRoA presence or authority in that area. Most of us will land on a work in progress. We still have to start with as complete a grasp of the local environment as we can get.

These days, there is nearly always legacy documentation of what has been learned and done in most areas we could find ourselves in. Often it is not readily retrievable and may be a shotgun pattern of disconnected information. Afghanistan has been called the “graveyard of databases.” So many different repositories have been established over the years that we have, collectively, forgotten what we have learned. Foreign assistance personnel are transitory. We work there for awhile and then we leave, replaced by others after a brief hand-off. That knowledge, that visualization, leaves with the outgoing person or organization. From experience, I know that some efforts become enduring and others end as soon as the personnel leave and are replaced. That is often not based on the merit of the action or program. Sometimes it is due to overlapping funding that has already been vetted and committed. Each rotation of personnel develops its own flavor, its own focus. Because of this, continuity of effort is sometimes lost.

Unity of effort is important, but continuity of effort is undervalued. It actually doesn’t appear on the doctrinal list of “COIN Imperatives.” It is recognized as a problem, though; particularly in the military/security line. The methodology and logistics of handing-off to a follow-on organization have been worked and re-worked for years in attempts to overcome the jerky nature of operations caused by these reliefs. State and USAID personnel change out less often, and being smaller, the hand-off is often more personal.

Many things affect handing over an area to a follow-on person or organization. Time is often a critical factor. There is a finite amount of overlap, sometimes none at all. Many organizations and personnel arriving in Afghanistan right now are getting information presented to them in a non-standard format that is essentially proprietary to the individual or organization on the way out. The rational decision-making processes that the outgoing personnel used may not be documented so that we can clearly understand the intended effects and why those effects were sought as part of an overall plan.

Is this a show-stopper? No, but it is a show-slower and a potential source of discontinuity. This has happened many times in many places, and makes Coalition and GIRoA efforts appear to be haphazard. Haphazard is ineffective in general, but it is definitely viewed as such by the majority of the population. Giving this impression is a great way to fail to gain support or even acquiescence. More and more often, we are seeing units arriving on information organized in a way that can be easily understood. When time is limited, quickly acquiring the situational awareness attained by the previous organization or individual is critical. Momentum, a key political concept, is lost. If the information is not organized in a way that we can anticipate, then we have to organize it so that the “next guy” gets what we didn’t. If we can anticipate how the information is organized, we can practice managing it and visualizing it (difficult tasks) in training. It’s all about visualizing the problems and solutions and maintaining steady and sustainable efforts to move things in a positive direction.

Wherever we find ourselves in the phases of operations, whether we are Shaping, Clearing, Holding or Building, we need to understand the history and thought processes that preceded ours. When deciding to modify or terminate an existing program or effort, we must first understand why that was being done in the first place. We need to understand how it is being measured in both outputs and effects so that any decision that we make is based on a logical approach and not gut feel or initial impressions. Sometimes the “Afghan way” is actually a good thing but looks very strange to a westerner at first glance. When we make decisions and choose courses of action, we document our decision making processes so that it is available and easier to visualize by our successors. We need to reach this level of understanding quickly, and so will they.

If we are lucky enough as a person or group to fall in on such information, organized in a way that we quickly understand, we will have a lot more continuity of effort. Our transition will be more seamless. If we are not so lucky, we have to resolve that our successors will have it easier. Once we have ascertained where we are, then we can apply the techniques appropriate to that phase to make progress. Some things, such as continuing to learn more about the people, places, conditions and events in an area never end. Reconnaissance, as we call it in the military, is constant. Continuous evaluation of our chosen activities and the effects they have on the local situation is also absolutely necessary. We cannot continue unchanged on a course of action that is producing negative consequences.

There is no canned formulaic solution that works in every situation. We strive to learn from the successes of others. We learn from the experiences of others, but we do not just automatically apply solutions because they worked elsewhere. We use our understanding of our discrete area to anticipate, as best we can, how such an action or program will impact the area that we work in. We understand the particulars, the personalities and the realities that will influence the enduring effects that our actions will have on the community. We recognize quickly when waves are made, including how the enemy responds, and we adjust our approach based on the success or failure of any endeavor. We choose metrics that reflect the actual effects of what we do, not just measuring our activity. We do not reinforce failure, and we don’t fail to recognize and redouble success.

We identify, protect and support resiliencies we find in the community and seek to identify and develop undiscovered resiliencies. We are imaginative, collaborative and receptive. We listen, and we interpret input based on knowledge, not impressions or a reliance on intuition. If we don’t know, we use all of our assets to find out. We listen to our enemy, and we separate the lies and half-truths from the truths. Elements of all of the three will be present. We learn to understand why and how his message appeals to the people. We are honest in accepting the truths and seeking to address them to resolve issues that truly do concern the population, such as corruption and injustice. Throughout all of this, we document all of what we learn, what we decided and what we based our decision on so that everyone from our supervisors to our replacements can visualize and understand, assist and continue on.

We have a consistent message, or conversation with the people, that is reinforced by every action we take and is based on enduring themes that have significance to the local population. It is a centerpiece, not an addendum, and is just as pervasive as reconnaissance in everything we do. We think very seriously before taking any action that is contrary to or dilutes our message.

Progress in counterinsurgency and stability is incremental and slow. It is frustrating and sometimes painful. It is difficult to continue in the face of systemic corruption and abuse of power. It is difficult to overcome the negative impression left by a unit that approached the problem as a counter-guerrilla operation. It sometimes seems hopeless where illiteracy is rampant and the people appear inscrutable at first glace. Counterinsurgency is also dangerous. Courage is required, but often that means the courage of conviction to keep trying in the face of adversity and danger coupled with frustration, the combination of which is a powerful demotivator. Keeping our eye on the ball and recognizing subtle shifts is how we cope. Even a little bit of change can make a big difference, and the chances are good that if we reach the tipping point, the Holy Grail of COIN, we will likely not realize it until later.

Note that part of information we collect and keep as part of the ASCOPE/PMESII is the enemy message; their Information Operations (IO). We track their narrative, or conversation with the people. It’s not that hard to gather. We just ask the locals what the insurgent is saying about whatever. They will usually tell us, and they will look for a reaction. We make sure that we get it straight by asking as many people as possible, right down to the casual encounter on the street. This is something that we can include our sensing of the effects that we are having. We can also gather a lot of information about the way that the people react to insurgent IO.

Is the insurgent message hitting home with the populace? Why? There will be a mixture of truths, half-truths and outright lies. Our job is to determine which is which and from there figure out why the insurgent message either appeals to the people or freezes them in place on the fence; unwilling or afraid to commit to supporting or even acquiescing to government rule.

An example of a lie that hit home is an experience in The Tagab Valley, Kapisa Province in August of 2007. At the appearance of Americans, the local Afghan women would turn away, squat and remain motionless, as if they were pretending to be a stone. Men would also behave strangely, but would still step forward to have contact. This was uncommon, and so the interpreter was engaged to figure it out. In the end, it was learned that part of the insurgent narrative in that area was that the ballistic eye wear of the Americans was purported to be able to see through clothing. This was apparently plausible in the minds of the locals, so they responded to the risk of being shamed by concealing their bodies as best they could.

The overall effect was to keep an artificial barrier between the Americans and the Afghans. Many did not believe the story, but enough had their doubts so that the “I will make myself a stone” behavior was widespread. This story was localized, but has been repeated often in a number of other areas. It is not believed by more educated Afghans, but among illiterate people who believe that Americans can do impossible things with technology, it is just plausible enough to warrant caution. Though the effect that it achieved was partial, it would have to be described as successful.

Countering the message involved removing the eye wear and at times addressing the situation directly. If an older Afghan man had heard the rumor, he was offered to try the glasses, and when he saw that the lenses offered no additional capabilities, he was then able to share this with others. Meanwhile, it was stumbled upon that Afghans appreciate the removal of sunglasses in conversation, anyway. This knowledge is now included in COMISAF’s guidance on the wear of ballistic eye protection.

This was a simple example, and by no means an exhaustive description of the complete insurgent narrative in that area. It was just one aspect of it.

Since we know that an insurgency is a political war, we know that the conversation we have with the people is necessary. Each agency or organization, down to the individual level, has a conversation with the local population. The insurgent does the same thing.

We see national-level conversation, such as the rules regulating the behavior of insurgents released by the Taliban. These narratives make international news. In each area, however, the narrative is tailored and refined to appeal to local perceptions, issues and sensibilities. These are the insurgent narratives you are unlikely to hear on the nightly news back home. These messages are also tailored to expand upon the failures of the counterinsurgents on the local level in the specific area. The ultimate goal is obviously to discredit the government, but there are generally messages specifically targeted towards each of the counterinsurgent agencies and often directed at specific individuals.

The insurgent chooses his overall themes and then breaks them down locally. His actions are taken in order to support or further these messages. Insurgent commanders have been fired for getting off message or taking actions that did not support the overall message. An example of this is the insurgent commander replaced after ordering the acid attack on Afghan school girls. The point is that the actions that insurgents take are in support of their narrative, not the other way around. A weakness of counterinsurgents is that they often reverse this equation and try to work their narrative as an adjunct to their efforts, instead of making it a main feature of their operations.

We are at the point where we are selecting actions. At this point, it is absolutely necessary to develop a dialog based on our local issues that rings true with the local populace. Otherwise, we are ceding control of the information war to the insurgents. The national narrative by the government, NATO and all the implementation partners is broad and very general. Simply mouthing the words of GEN Petraeus or the ambassador will not suffice. The local farmer does not hear anything specific in these messages that applies to him. A local narrative is demanded, tailored to the specifics of the local area.

In the end, the goal is to support local government legitimacy; but that doesn’t mean that our narrative lies about government effectiveness. If the government is struggling in a particular area, the best choice is probably to acknowledge that. It will likely be something that you are going to target for improvement, anyway. The local people may not be educated, but they are not stupid, and they already know what works and doesn’t work for them. The counterinsurgent/stability course or courses of action must identify and target these inadequacies in order to have a lasting effect locally. The insurgent narrative is probably quite harsh about these failings. Trying to gloss over things that the locals find objectionable will not improve matters, and only reinforces insurgent relevance.

Each main logical line of operation, Military/Security, Development and Governance, needs to support each other’s messaging. It should all dovetail into a seamless narrative aimed at competing for the ear of the farmer and shopkeeper against the insurgent narrative. Because it is backed by action consistent with the narrative, it is reinforced in the eyes of local observers. It’s a relationship, and as in any relationship, say what you mean and do what you say. Nobody cares about airy promises and trite sayings. They want to see action that supports what you say. This, more than any other thing, is what builds trust among the people.

So part of each working group’s agenda needs to be the conversation with the people, distilled from a thorough understanding of the local area and their issues, including what the insurgent is saying. Then, once the local message of each actor is established, it is consistently carried and not deviated from significantly. Commanders ensure that their narrative is carried by every soldier, and NCO’s enforce this standard.

Proposed actions are compared against the narrative and either the action is altered or the objective of that action is incorporated into the narrative. If a proposed action is contrary to the narrative, it is given great scrutiny to determine the appropriateness of that action. Rarely will we take an action that does not directly support our narrative. This is the key to effective information operations, which are the audible evidence of our conversation with the local populace.

It seems as if there is a lot to do just to get to the point of deciding on actions to take in support of counterinsurgency objectives. As we’ve seen, there is a lot to consider, a lot of information to be gathered, and a lot of disparate actors who need to be brought into the fold as much as possible. We know that we have limited time and resources, so we know that we have to work on the most pressing issues. We know that we are looking to identify the root, or systemic, causes of instability and the prerequisites for insurgency. But how does one look at all the information we’ve now become aware of and determine what is a systemic cause and what is not? How do we ensure that we are not wasting our precious resources on something that will make no real difference?

We can rely on human intuition, but our human intuition may fail us. What each of us would find unacceptable personally may not be the primary issue on the part of the local population. We need to understand their point of view. Unless we can magically put ourselves on their rung of Maslow’s hierarchy and in the same environment with the same experiences, how can we determine not just what they want, but what they need first? We need local input.

The approaches we have taken in the past have taken a number of forms. What we think they need, what we think they want, what they say they want, what they say they need. Who were “they?” Usually elders, district sub-governors, provincial governors, and shuras. Okay, the shura sounds pretty representative, but there are a couple of sticking points there. We are talking about securing or re-securing an area, along with stabilizing or re-stabilizing an area that is in the third poorest country in the world. Just to be clear, an area may be, by all measures, stable under insurgent control. We may destabilize an area in order to restabilize it under government control. Keep in mind that those residents who are successful, or relatively successful, in the existing order of things will seek to maintain their control over resources throughout whatever we do. They will possibly seek to gain in stature or influence through our efforts. We need to look past the evident and look for the systemic reason behind the perception of pain.

Just as a problem in your back can cause pain elsewhere, such as the leg, so can underlying conditions in a district in Afghanistan cause a perception that is slightly removed from the root. For example; in one valley, the drinking water wells began to run dry. Asked what they needed, the locals responded that they needed deeper wells dug. A hydrologist was brought in, and discovered that the there was a series of check dams in poor repair. So poor was their condition that the dams were not doing their job of slowing runoff water long enough for it to seep into the water table.

A combination of local labor and materials purchased with CERP (Commander’s Emergency Response Program) funds refurbished the check dams, and the water table rose. The wells began to produce again. The locals thought their problem was that their wells weren’t deep enough, but the real source of their pain lay elsewhere. The solution addressed the systemic cause of the condition, is sustainable by the local population and it had the lasting effect that was desired.

That example was an infrastructure issue, but each issue needs to be approached in a similar way as far as the process of determining what the root cause of the condition is. The approach utilizes local input, but the systemic cause is sought to target for solutions. This may not be targeting the perceptive source of the condition based simply on the complaint itself. The lasting effect is what is important, and we must be able to monitor not only what and how much we are doing, but also the effects that those actions are having on the issue. We try to anticipate the second- and third-order effects, but sometimes the local response to our actions may not be what we anticipated, so we must constantly reevaluate what we are seeing and doing. We adjust. Sometimes, that means that we stop doing things that are having second- and third-order effects that are negative and that we cannot mitigate. In order to adjust to unwanted effects, we must find a way to measure or otherwise monitor them. We must sense the object in our path in order to avoid or overcome it.

Left to our own devices, each of us would come up with a slightly different methodology to approach these problems. In military organizations, it is usually the Executive Officer (XO) who is tasked with being the good idea fairy who provides a methodology. Google is his friend, and several tools do exist. Some XO’s have developed their own tools. This is time consuming and unnecessary. It is not only an unnecessary usage of time and bandwidth, but it is actually harmful in the long run. The willy-nilly choice of tools interferes with coherence.

Unity of effort relies on a common operational picture, but that’s not the only aid to unity of effort. A common operational framework helps in developing a common operational language. These three things will do more to establish unity of effort, even in the absence of unity of command, than anything. And, those three things will improve and strengthen existing relationships.

USAID developed a decision-support framework called the District Stability Framework, or DSF. This framework not only includes the things that have been described above, but for our military friends, it is doctrinally sound according to FM 3.07 Stability Operations. It doesn’t provide an answer; it provides a logical route to reach our own conclusions, measure our outputs and the effects they are having locally, and adjust course. It seeks the root causes of the grievances or sources of instability (like the prerequisites for insurgency) in a discrete area, and seeks to act directly upon them.

The DSF is a four-step, iterative process. The four steps are; Situational Awareness, Analysis (hello, brigade staff extra analytical muscle), Design and Monitoring and Evaluation. It is repeatable, and used as a common framework, can provide continuity of effort. Just as any military commander can walk into any operations center and read the military symbols on a map, having a common framework means that it can be readily passed on, like a sector sketch to a relieving unit. It works the same way for civilians as well. It, like the ASCOPE/PMESII, becomes a continuity document. It saves time later, and avoids perpetually “reinventing the wheel.” It also shows follow-on units or organizations what we were thinking about when we chose the path we left them on.

The idea is to avoid chasing phantom pains with money, time and lives. It’s the old blood and treasure thing; but this is not some academic or politician crying out about the concept of it. It is where if/when we spill blood, it is on the ground right there in front of us. It’s where treasure translates into concrete and actions. So you have to make it count.

We’ve developed all kinds of situational and cultural awareness through our continuing ASCOPE/PMESII information gathering. Now we will need to plan for gathering local input about what they think their most pressing problems are. USAID fielded the DSF with a survey based on four now famous questions. It was called TCAPF, or the Tactical Conflict Assessment and Planning Framework. The survey was never as simple as four questions, because it delved deeper. A useful tool in concept and in certain practices, TCAPF has acquired a bad name. Initially TCAPF was attempted by troops, and the results were not what was expected. The Brits were the first to sour on TCAPF, and for many British officers it poisoned the whole concept of the DSF. Stand on TCAPF with a British officer even casually versed in the British Army’s experiences with it in Helmand and you have lost that officer’s confidence. It turns out that soldiers really aren’t the best to be asking TCAPF questions. It skews the results and they have the tendency to re-canvass the same people over and over again. They also missed 50% of the population right off the bat; the women. No input from 50% of the population is a problem, as is a skewed and narrowed data stream.

Afghans are the best to do TCAPF questioning. There is a national student organization that actually trains and fields TCAPF canvassers. They can be contracted, and the results are remarkably different when Afghans are polled by native Afghans rather than by armed foreigners. We also avoid an unintended follow-on effect; when foreign troops, who are viewed as very powerful by the average Afghan, ask an Afghan what his problem is, it is viewed as a promise to solve that problem. It has something to do with the psychology of extreme poverty. Regardless, disappointed expectations become grievances in their own right and prove difficult to resolve.

TCAPF data is useful, if the data stream isn’t skewed by, say, armed foreigners. It can provide the ability to do problem set analysis and also trend analysis. The idea is to gather information slowly, over time, and watch the trends. They will indicate whether the local perceptions are being changed by actions taken. Trend analysis is enormously helpful and in reality necessary for what we need to do.

TCAPF is only one tool, and while it was fielded with the DSF, the DSF will not break if another effective tool is used. There are other ways to gather local perceptions. One thing that should be considered; a strength of TCAPF is that it doesn’t rely upon elders, shuras or government officials. In fact, those people need not be surveyed, because it’s all too easy to get their opinions. The idea is to discover what the shop keeper and the farmer think. Whatever tool or method we choose, this is a feature that we want to have. We want to understand what the little guy thinks. The powerful guy may have reasons for the solution he is seeking from us.

Some areas have used “radio in a box” and call-in shows hosted by Afghan DJ’s. For instance, the Afghan DJ has a AF500 phone card available to a caller who wins the contest. As part of this, the callers are casually and informally polled about specific conditions in their local area. This is checked against other information and used to contribute to the understanding of the perceptions of the locals. Just an example of another method that may confirm or deny information gathered otherwise, be it TCAPF or some other method.

Whatever tool is ultimately used, gathering and measuring local perceptions about the issues that affect them directly is absolutely necessary. As mentioned early on, there has to be a conversation between the counterinsurgent and the populace, just as the insurgent carries on his narrative. What is being described here makes that conversation a two-way conversation. Again, the results of all perception gathering is shared with every partner. Each one needs to understand the perceptions of the local community. It is our way of compensating for our weakness (insurgent strength); knowledge of the issues that affect the local population and what they think of it. The insurgent seeks to exacerbate these issues and replace the government as a solution. We seek to resolve the issues and remove that traction from the insurgent.

Once we understand the local perceptions, we look for the systemic cause of those perceptions. “The wells are drying up, and now I have to walk a mile to get my water.” Ouch. Well, the first answer would be to deepen the wells. That would work for awhile, until the water table was drained further. Then what? By discovering the systemic cause for the falling water table… the dilapidated check dams… the root cause was targeted. That’s just an example. There may be several systemic causes that contribute to a single perception. We seek to identify these.

We choose courses of action that we believe will attack these root causes directly. (We work to repair the check dams.) The actions of one line of operation will support the other lines of operation as much as possible. For instance, for any governmental or economic action, there must be security provided. As security improves, governance must improve or the security gain will prove temporary. Economic development supports both actions, as economic prosperity (or even progress) has an enormous calming effect.

In one village in Nad e Ali, Helmand Province, an alternate truck route was sought using an existing road with a bridge over the main canal. The usual main route required a bypass due to needed repairs on its bridge over the canal. However, the town immediately adjacent the canal on the desired alternate route was rife with Taliban. The town saw the economic growth occurring just a few kilometer away in the villages where the hold and build phases of operations were already in progress, and they wanted that type of economic opportunity. Once the decision had been made by the local leaders, the Taliban were ousted within 24 hours. Trucks began to pass through the town, and the increased traffic brought more customers to the shops in the town. Government began to reach out to the town, and the local elders reached back. That is a dramatic example, but it is real and indicates how actions along one line of operation create opportunities along other lines of operation and must be supported by follow-on effects from these other lines.

The final question that must be asked is whether or not the issues identified are actually systemic contributors to instability. We subject each issue to three questions. First, we ask if the issue decreases support for the government. Second, we ask if it increases support for the insurgents. Last, we ask if the issue disrupts the normal functioning of society. If the answer to each of these questions is, “No,” then it is likely to be a development issue which can be addressed later.

The issue of the wells above is an example of something that may not be a systemic cause of instability. It is a good example of a problem-solving approach, though. It is also possible that it can be a source of instability if one of the effects of the dry wells is to give some form of artificial power to a malign actor, or if it causes the local population to feel as if the government isn’t interested in actually solving their problems; a disruption to normal function. It may cause conflict. It would require more information than that provided above to determine the relevance to stability, but it may be there.

Another key that we look for is not weaknesses, but strengths; forces for good. Almost every community has key people who are effective and who can be reinforced to good ends. These are called resiliencies. We seek to identify, mentor, and reinforce these resiliencies. We look for people and organizations who can have a stabilizing effect. We look for existing traditional frameworks that can be strengthened or reestablished which support local sufficiency. Working around local resiliencies while failing to engage them is potentially disastrous. We may also seek to assist in creating new resiliencies, such as Community Development Councils.

We begin to construct a matrix of the information and analytical outcomes. In the DSF, it is called a Tactical Stability Matrix. It is a chart of the information and decisions, allowing everyone to understand how we are arriving at our conclusions. It shows the logic flow of our decisions and guides us to use this logical flow. Each partner has a part in this process. It is not done in a vacuum.

This is an imprecise process, as much art as it is science. Mistakes will be made. That is why we work to anticipate the effects that our actions will create. We also need to constantly monitor not only our outputs (are we doing what we said we were going to do?), but we also measure the effects themselves. If we chose actions (we thought) would work to lessen police corruption, but the systemic causes don’t respond or actually get worse, then perhaps we chose poorly or missed something. We need to readjust.

So, just as we choose actions to take (which we will, of course, use a metric of activity on our part), we anticipate the affect that our actions will have on the systemic cause of instability we are seeking to resolve. We leverage and reinforce local resiliencies. We find ways to measure those effects. This always includes some measure of public opinion. We want to know if the perception that led us to what we believe is a systemic cause is actually impacted by what we do. What we are seeking in the end is the desired third-order effect; the lasting impression left in the minds of the people.

As we chart our course, it includes the counterinsurgent narrative that it will support.

Now the counterinsurgents are gaining a pretty thorough understanding of the local area, with so much information that it’s hard to manage it, much less remember it. We have to form a picture out of it. The concept is getting to know the area the way that a beat cop knows the neighborhood that he works in every day for years.

Except that we don’t have years to get to know the villages in the valleys and the people that inhabit them. Simplistic viewpoints such as a belief that, “It’s the tribes!” is the answer to every question about Afghan society won’t help us get to know them any quicker.

We must use what we have available to discover this information as efficiently as possible and use your resources to manage it. Also, keep in mind that very little of what we will learn from this is actually intelligence. We are learning what the local population already knows, so it is information. Intelligence officers and others must be careful not to over-classify information and mistakenly call it intelligence. Over-classification of what should be simple information is counter to the first requirement of creating unity of effort; communication. Communication starts with the sharing of basic information. This is how counterinsurgents partner to develop a common operating picture; seeing what each other sees and filling in the gaps in each other’s vision.

A good example of how this common vision was short-circuited is the way that Human Terrain System information was forced to be transmitted over the military’s secure information network, classifying the information by default. While it was an effective way of transporting information, it was not an effective way to disseminate it, and is a great failure to achieve a common operating picture using shared information. Again, very little, if any, of the information gathered by Human Terrain Teams needs to be classified, because information about how a society works is already known by its members.

The insurgents use “open-source” warfare because of necessity and adaptability. For us, it is actually a requirement; but we can do much better in so many ways.

If Google could search Afghan society, all that information would be there, and not because of Wikileaks. It’s practically open source; except there are no search engines that will tell you who the Malik of this or that town is, no listing of mosques or schools with their grid locations, no listings of teachers and where they live. You can’t Google who owns what land, who is involved in a land dispute and what families gravitate to which side in that dispute. You have to find that information out, document it, make the information retrievable and share it with all of the other actors involved so that they are aware of it. Blunders are avoided in such a way; the types of blunders that can spoil relationships.

Many act as if it is some kind of revelation that Afghan society works through relationships, but that’s nothing new, even in the age of internet social networking. In fact, the rise of tech-driven social networking is proof that American society works through relationships. The most successful people are great networkers. They remember details about their friends, relatives and business associates. Golf courses would struggle to survive if it weren’t for the business of business that takes executives to the courses to form and strengthen the relationships that keep businesses intertwined.

American society is as networked as the qawms of Afghanistan. The weave is different, but the fabric is very similar. The end result is a need to understand the various threads and how they are interwoven. It is as important for the development and governmental capacity builders to understand these intertwined relationships as those involved in security and military operations.

From the picture that begins to emerge from all of the various elements of information that we have gathered, we start to see three things emerge. We will find that there is some kind of grievance/unmet need, unfulfilled expectation or vacuum in authority that affects the people in their daily lives. Secondly, we will find that there is local leadership that is available to channel this into a willingness to commit violence, at least among a few locals. Finally, we will find that there is a weakness in the government, or a perception of weakness, instability or corruption. These are the causes and conditions that will exist in the presence of an insurgency. Sometimes they will seem to be glaringly apparent, but a methodical approach will help in identifying what the most pressing issues that demand action are. There is a methodology to help keep this analysis organized, but we know that the answers for each area are unique to that area. This is why we don’t just apply a methodology and ignore local information. Quite the contrary.

Note that as we gather information to create our mosaic picture of the local conditions, we do not ignore the terrain, nor do we ignore the enemy. We don’t include intelligence in our sharing unless that member is cleared to possess the intelligence. But a lot of information about the enemy will be “open-source” information, because the enemy often lives among the population. Even if a key figure is not native to the local area, the people know who he is and often where he hangs out and how many fighters he can gather. They know who the shadow sub-governor is, what he has said and who transmits his messages. So all of this is included in our operational picture. The point is that this picture is holistic.

Through this development of a common operating picture, all of the counterinsurgents and stability actors can begin to have a dialog that can synchronize efforts towards a set of common, sometimes very incremental goals. Each logical line of operation supports the other. If these lines of effort intertwine, they are as strong as rope. If they don’t, they are three relatively easily broken strands that may rub against each other and weaken each other.

Assume that most of the other individuals and groups are acting in good faith, trying to do the best that they can. Understand that each will approach the problem set that begins to emerge from their own background and experience, with a view towards whatever “lane” they fall in. Each should share the common picture, but each is oriented towards one of the main three lines or a piece that falls under one of them. Some will be very specific, such as rule of law or agricultural development specialists. Each brings something to the table. A locality may not be ready for all of the good things that the some members of the effort will wish to do. And, gains made in one area that are not supported by gains in other lines of operation will be temporary at best, eventually ceding ground due to a lack of follow-through. Each agency or individual will take some sort of action in an attempt to achieve the effects they desire; to accomplish their jobs. Dozens of people moving separately with good intentions is still along the line of the thousand monkeys with typewriters probability of success; eventually, somewhere, Shakespeare will emerge. Unity of effort is key.

How does a group of counterinsurgent/stability actors get synchronized and stay on course? Efforts must be “linked and synched” at each level of operation. ISAF, USAID, the State Department and the UN maybe linked at the national level and completely de-linked at the provincial level. In fact, this has been the case fairly often. Military commanders will have no realistic idea from day to day where the various and sundry individuals working for good are in the operational area he is supposed to be providing security for. However, there is no “requirement” for everyone to check in with or “be cleared” by the military commander. In the past, American units working separately with the ANP and ANA were often oblivious to each other’s presence only a short distance from each other. Working groups, sharing as much information as possible without compromising security, are necessary. This should be done to the lowest level possible. This may mean an Army platoon, an ANA company, and solitary representatives from various agencies such as USAID, the PRT, the district ANP chief, the district sub-governor and various elders working together to synchronize efforts.

At some level, everyone needs to be engaged if possible. There may be a higher-level working group that involves key actors and makes decisions and coordination, but each agency or individual needs to be involved in the larger group. You can never have too much collaboration, but care must be taken not to let the sea of voices degenerate into cacophony.

In the past and continuing into today, projects have been selected (often pre-selected) for various areas. The first answers that come to mind in relation to development, for instance, are, “Build a road, build a school, build a clinic.” These seemingly default answers may or may not be what is needed first. Based on our understanding of the picture we’ve developed, the counterinsurgents must determine what is needed first. Just as we have applied a methodology to gather and manage the information that has built a picture for us to understand the area, we now apply a decision-support framework to solve the issues we have begun to identify.

We need to understand where we are starting. We talk in terms of, “Clear, Hold and Build.” In Afghanistan it has become, “Shape, Clear, Hold and Build.” These are a way of phasing operations, like setting checkpoints along a route. They also describe the overall effect that is desired for that phase. The concept of, “Shape, Clear, Hold and Build,” is a military concept based upon who published COIN guidance referencing these phases of operations (COMISAF). You will find plenty of civilians speaking in these terms, but some civilian organizations don’t really buy off on it. That does not mean that they cannot be synchronized into a plan, but it may provide communications challenges. Each logical line of operation has a contribution and tasks that they need to accomplish in order for these operations not to degrade into a cycle of periodic clearing with scant or failed efforts to hold and build which always melt away into worsening security; a pattern which many of us have witnessed repeatedly in Afghanistan.

Each actor must agree realistically to what they are to accomplish and when. There must be accountability each to the other, and through solid relationships, each can respond to needed support or adjustments due to setbacks. It is still a war, and then enemy still gets a vote. There will be delays and disruptions. Each must adjust and work around these; as long as it does not prevent progress.

In order for all of this to occur, there needs to be a plan. There is commonly no one person “in charge” of the efforts. Of the three main logical lines of operation, Military/Security, Governance and Economic Development, none of three “food chains” culminate in the same person in the country of Afghanistan. The principle of “Unity of Command” is broken; if you think of it as a strictly military effort. But it isn’t. Unity of command is a military principle and there for one reason; to attain unity of effort. Unity of effort can be attained without unity of command, but it requires tact, patience, understanding and good will on the parts of the several actors involved.

In the end, the correct answer would be for the Afghan official involved to be in charge. That is the goal, anyway. But, in practice that takes time and a lot of mentoring (often not provided) to attain. So we have to operate by some sort of mutual understanding. Personal prejudices come into play and must be overcome. Military viewpoints on civilian aid workers will lead to assumptions being made (flower-munching, Birkenstock-wearing tree huggers). The reverse is also often true (linear-thinking knuckle-draggers who say, “Clausewitz!” if you sneeze near them). These are human failings that professionals must recognize in themselves and work through, because they are completely counterproductive. Professionals override these knee-jerk reactions and work through it.

There are a number of frameworks that have been proposed and used for decision support in Afghanistan. USAID has developed one that has been accepted by the Army and approved by officials ranging from COMISAF to the Secretary of Defense; the District Stability Framework. Through seeing a common operational picture, we attained a degree of unity of vision. Now we begin to speak a common operational language by organizing and speaking of information and decisions using a common operational framework.

We know that we want to move the internal struggles inside a country away from violence (warfare) and into (or back into) the political realm. We’ve had a general look at what insurgencies consist of, why they start and what fuels them. We know that the existence of sanctuaries don’t ensure insurgent success, but are practically necessary for insurgents to have any hope of success. We know that the military/security line of operation is only one of three main lines of operation. We know that a well-developed insurgency is, at its roots, a competition to govern. So how do we resolve the insurgency without the collapse of the government and the complete take-over by insurgents?

Counterinsurgents cannot stand still and wait it out. They cannot simply continue upon their course without continuous movement and adjustment to conditions on the ground and in the population. They must choose actions and take them. Every counterinsurgent chooses actions and takes them, but a significant number of them (3 or 4 out of 10) are unsuccessful. Is there a pattern of behavior that counterinsurgents establish that is successful versus those that aren’t?

First, the counterinsurgent must understand the roots of the conflict. Usually, insurgencies don’t carry a head of steam where there is effective governance and plenty of it. The counterinsurgent must take a really good look at what the weaknesses are of the system he or she is trying to support. Sun Tzu pointed out that a combatant must understand not only his enemy, but also himself. A counterinsurgent must understand what his strengths and weaknesses are and he must be honest about it. The counterinsurgent must also understand the environment, both physical and societal, in which he operates. Finally, understanding insurgencies in general, he must understand the insurgency he faces.

While there are commonalities in insurgencies, every insurgency is obviously different. A counterinsurgent must understand the particulars of the conflict. In Afghanistan, for instance, we created a vacuum in government followed by the construction and installation of a government from, more or less, scratch. This was done in a nation where the society had been existing amidst conflict for decades. The previous “government” was scarcely a government at all. There was ongoing warfare from 1979 to the present. The only thing the previous government maintained was law and order, administering swift, often brutal justice for any offense. The economy was a shambles. Infrastructure that had once existed had largely crumbled. Electricity was scarce. Education was minimal for boys, nonexistent for girls. Communications were horrible. Local warlords still held sway in parts of the country. Remnants of the old regime still held out in isolated areas.

While Afghan society had enough coherence to hold its basic fabric together, it was often at the most basic levels of that fabric; the family. Traditional resiliencies, the influences that kept Afghan society flourishing, were severely damaged at each local level. At the national level, there was very little coherence. The fledgling government took years to push influence out into areas that had been, at least nominally, cleared in 2002 of the influence of the previous regime. In the meantime, those influences seeped back in or never completely left.

Being a politically-motivated internal war, the goal is political, and all politics is local. Therefore, insurgency is local. Counterinsurgency needs to be localized, and cannot be adequately performed at a national level in the absence of acceptable local governance. That is why we have so many problems measuring nation-wide progress. In order to measure things, we need to choose and analyze metrics.

National metrics are exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to choose and measure. Metrics indicating success in one discrete area may or may not indicate measurable progress or loss in another discrete area. Afghanistan is a patchwork of valleys and villages. This insurgency is more localized than most, not less. Leadership at the national level needs to look at each area and measure it by the metrics that are meaningful for that particular area. It is difficult to put the pieces together at the national level to create a mosaic that makes sense. There are various and sundry depictions of the conflict, many varying wildly from others. These are constructed by utilizing whatever metrics support the argument of the individual making the argument. It’s difficult to impossible to know which depictions to trust.

This difficulty in producing a coherent picture does not lend itself to centralized command and control. That is why COIN doctrine talks about something called, “Mission Command.” Mission Command means that the local commander, at the lowest level possible, has command over the decisions made at the local level. He is most likely to understand how the pieces of the puzzle are arrayed locally. He is most likely to understand the complex, three dimensional chess game being played against the influences of the insurgent.

We know that the local commander, given Mission Command, must come to understand himself (including his allies), the insurgency and the local dynamics (terrain and society) that set the situation he must deal with. This is a tremendous amount of information. In Afghanistan, we have seen a number of initiatives designed to help the commanders gather and analyze this information. The Human Terrain System, for instance, is an effort to bring the science of anthropology to bear on understanding the intricacies of local society. But a military commander has the largest number of information gathering assets of any of the counterinsurgents in the area; foreign counterinsurgents, anyway. Local Afghans will already possess most of the information that the rest of the counterinsurgents will find helpful, but they usually do not know what to do with it or don’t have the resources.

So, using every source of information available, the commander, at the lowest level possible, must develop a “picture” of the environment in which he operates. He gathers information, but there is so much of it that it is hard to separate out meaningful information from the white noise of the information flow. It’s like trying to paint a picture of the rocks under a waterfall just by the way the water is falling. That’s why the commander needs to take a methodical approach to not only gathering, but also in organizing and correlating the information he can gather to put together a comprehensive picture of the operational environment and its challenges. It’s a job never ends, because while the terrain will change little or not at all, the society will constantly change. People will gain and lose influence. People will die and others will take their places. With the societal aspect in constant flux, the commander must track the changes and adjust as necessary.

Keep in mind that this commander is only on the ground for about a year. When he leaves, his successor needs to have the same information. Military commanders are used to organizing tactical information in certain ways. For instance, tactical graphics on a map are consistent. If one walks up to a tactical map in nearly any area, he can understand the tactical information on that map because he knows what those map symbols mean. There is an entire book on Operational Graphics. When it comes to depicting the things that affect societies, there are no standard map symbols. Commanders have organized this information as they have seen fit, but that doesn’t mean that it is easily understandable to those who follow them. A standard method of organizing and correlating the information is necessary. This not only makes the information easier to understand, but a relatively standardized format means that the incoming unit will be able to easily understand it as well. It will be what they are expecting to see.

Our doctrine lays out specific elements of information that are recommended for counterinsurgents to understand in order to obtain this grasp on the local situation. The COIN Training Center – Afghanistan has taken the two recommended sets of information and cross-referenced them. This system has now been signed off on by COMISAF, COMCENTCOM and the SECDEF. This system takes the analysis of ASCOPE (Areas, Structures, Capabilities, People and Events) and crosses it with PMESII (Political, Military/Security, Economic, Social, Infrastructure and Information).

Each column is referenced against the other. So, when we are looking at Areas, for instance, we look at Political Areas, Military/Security Areas, Economic Areas, Social Areas, Infrastructure Areas and Information Areas. What does an Information Area mean? In Afghanistan, it may mean an area of radio station coverage. It also means areas of cell phone coverage. Those are just examples. The end result is that people have a consistent way of painting the picture that is consistently read by others who see it.

How does the commander collect this mass of information? He uses all of his assets. If he has HTS available, for example, he discovers what they are best at and tries to use the information that they can give him. However, he does not necessarily control the HTS or any of the other actors. He does control his own troops, and so he generates PIR’s (Priority Information Requirements), IR’s (Information Requirements), and FFIR’s (Friendly Forces Information Requirements) based on where he sees information gaps and then he relentlessly pushes those out and gathers the results. This focuses troops on actually being sensors. If the commander explains why he needs the information, the troops have a deeper sense of purpose and a more realistic sense of what they are actually trying to accomplish. Plus, understanding the commander’s intent gives young leaders the chance to find ways to contribute. They can act more appropriately in the absence of orders as well.

Noncommissioned officers can then reinforce the things that are important to counterinsurgents. Discipline has one purpose; to ensure discipline on the battlefield. In a counterinsurgency, the battlefield doesn’t always include combat, but every action or inaction is combat. Drill and ceremonies, that visual example of military discipline, was initially developed to use directly on the battlefield. It was training. Now it is an outward symbol of discipline, but marching formations are not used in combat. Uniformity and other regulations are made to instill the discipline that can be put to use in combat, the only place where it really, really matters. It is how soldiers can do unnatural things in stressful, dangerous situations. We usually think of this in relation to kinetic combat, but it also has meaning in non-kinetic counterinsurgency operations. NCO’s enforce standards, and when the commander is generating standards based on his needs in counterinsurgent combat, the NCO’s can understand and enforce those standards. The sidewalk discipline of garrison life must then morph into the battlefield discipline needed to be successful on the ground. The appearance of uniforms means nothing in the face of failure in the valleys and villages of Afghanistan. Commanders and senior NCO’s who understand and focus military discipline in Afghanistan gather and organize tons of information.

Masses of information need to be analyzed. The commander and NCO’s discussed above are at company level and below. The higher up the “food chain” you go, the more separated from the nitty gritty reality of the “eaches” you are. This is not how battalion and brigade commanders are trained to function. In maneuver warfare, the more information the higher level commanders possess, the better they can maneuver and influence the battlefield. We have developed magnificent tools for commanders to see exactly what is going on at the individual vehicle level. He can see where it is and he can check on what it is doing. He can control it if he wants to. In counterinsurgency, a battalion commander interjecting himself directly at the tactical level can be disastrous. At best, you have the least informed person in the chain making the tactical decision. The principle of Mission Command is critical. Violating this principle can have debilitating effects.

So what are higher headquarters good for in counterinsurgency? Platoons have nearly zero analytical horsepower. Companies have very little. Company level intelligence support teams (of various acronyms) were developed to help solve this problem. Battalions have more information crunching assets, and brigades have significant analytical capabilities. Lower echelons are awash in information, but creating a useful picture out of it is difficult at the lower level due to the lack of analytical capability. Higher echelons support lower echelons by providing the ability to analyze information and convert it to useful products for the lower echelons to make use of according to Mission Command. They help the lower level commander to visualize his operational area. The battalion and brigade commander need to be able to recognize poor counterinsurgency behavior when they see it and provide adjustments as necessary, but they should not be dictating the actions of subordinates in the same manner as they would in a maneuver fight.

Once a thorough understanding of the operational area is obtained, the counterinsurgent mission commander begins to decide upon his actions.

Simply stated, the main goal of the counterinsurgent is to bring conflict back into the political end of the spectrum and out of the realm of warfare. Political conflict through participation is the goal, even if there is a robust opposition movement. As long as violence is no longer a political tool, and the existing framework (government, constitution?) remains in place, the counterinsurgent is successful.

First of all, who are the counterinsurgents? Commonly, they are usually thought of as combat forces, but that is not true. They fall, simply, into one or more of three main lines of operation; Military/Security, Political (or Governance) and Development. Certainly the host nation government’s job is to counter the insurgency. We always think of the host nation military and other security forces, but what of the “line ministries?” We have already seen that it is a competition to govern, so they are to be included. What about foreign forces? We assume that the foreign military forces are counterinsurgents, but what of the other arms of foreign policy? What about IGO’s (International Government Organizations) like the UN? Government organizations (GO’s) such as the US State Department and USAID are counterinsurgents as well, but they may not see themselves as defined by this term, preferring the stability label. They often think of counterinsurgents with the combat label, too. Nonetheless, they are counterinsurgents. They are political and development counterinsurgents as opposed to those in the military/security fields.

Host nation government ministries and security forces are active counterinsurgents, or should be. Citizens who in their hearts want to support the government, or who want to see the government succeed, are unofficial, largely unmobilized counterinsurgents. Part of the job of the active counterinsurgents is to mobilize as many of these unmobilized counterinsurgents as possible. Trinquier wrote extensively about his concept of how to actively organize these unofficial counterinsurgents. Galula approached the subject more indirectly, discussing how the government needs to succeed in the competition to govern, bringing more active support from unofficial counterinsurgents by improving governance. Some have identified the tipping point in various counterinsurgencies as the “moment” when these unofficial counterinsurgents began to mobilize to action in significant numbers. “Action” does not necessarily mean picking up arms. It may mean the willingness to make a phone call, or to participate in or attend a local shura. It may mean letting their female children attend school. It may mean avoiding supporting the insurgents.

Members of the international community fall into two groups; counterinsurgents and unaligned humanitarian organizations. Unaligned organizations jealously guard their neutral status. They are NGO’s (Non-Governmental Organizations) whose charters lead them to attempt to provide humanitarian services, such as medical services, in order to alleviate the suffering that populations are subject to in a war zone. They are unlikely to coordinate or share information with active counterinsurgents, but they are quite likely to consult frequently with insurgent leadership in order to gain access to populations held under insurgent sway or influence. They will not travel with counterinsurgents, but they will accept the protection of the insurgent. Counterinsurgents find this enormously frustrating, and it sometimes appears that the NGO’s are in bed with the insurgents. But counterinsurgents need to be realistic about it. Counterinsurgents will not, as a general rule, prevent access to NGO’s, whereas insurgents may not only prevent access but murder the NGO’s employees. The maintenance of neutrality, seemingly almost in favor of the insurgents, can be the difference between life and death.

NGO access is also often the extent to which insurgents are able to provide, or claim to sponsor, social services to the populations they “serve.” Again, the provision of social services has not been demonstrated to be a significant factor in the success of either insurgents or counterinsurgents, although counterinsurgents may put a lot of effort into providing social services in the (apparently mistaken) belief that this will sway populations. This is a common misinterpretation of the hated “hearts and minds” phrase.

The word, “victory,” is hard to define in an insurgency. Reading examinations by historians of various resolved insurgencies, it is remarkable how frequently the tipping point, or even the modality of how that tipping point was reached, is identified differently by different historians. Just take a look at the differing examinations of the Iraqi “surge narrative.” Even the defeat of the Malayan insurgency by the British has been subject to different historians reaching different, sometimes conflicting conclusions. In any case, insurgencies don’t end in obvious victory. There is no flag-raising. There is no triumphant moment when a platoon reports having reached the final objective, that resistance has ceased, and that the main follow-on forces are in sight, ready to consolidate their hold on the key terrain. None of that exists in a counterinsurgency operation. The word, “victory,” may only be used well in retrospect. The word, “success,” better describes what will be seen in the near to mid term.

When you set out on any endeavor where success and failure are possibilities, if you don’t have a goal in mind, it’s hard to even construct the plan. First, we must look at the causes and conditions that either gave rise to the insurgency or enabled it to develop. While instability does not always give rise to insurgency, instability will always be a feature of insurgency. We know that we have a domestic political situation which has entered the realm of warfare, and we know that conducting stability operations will be necessary. So you have an idea of what you’re there to do… or do you?

You have to understand what you’re in for.

There have been insurgencies against well-established governments, but the insurgency in Afghanistan is not one of those. There was no government after the Taliban vacated those offices. With the help of international assistance, whose individual national responsibilities were largely outlined in Bonn, a new government was constructed from the top down.

Remember, at the point of the Bonn Agreement no one, with the possible exception of the native Afghans involved in the process, whose numbers were limited, really knew what the internal problems in Afghanistan were/are. No one knew what the needs of the average Afghan were except in very broad human terms. Faced with the need to create an entire government from scratch, the western nations took a very western, top down approach. There appeared to be plenty of time to push governance out into the provinces, and it was assumed that there was no real competition to govern. The armed component appeared to be a counter-terror fight; stomping out brush fires of warlordism or Taliban leftovers, not a budding insurgency.

In retrospect, it could have been anticipated. However, the urge to lay blame for failures in the early stages shouldn’t be heeded. When we are too busy laying blame, we are not learning. This is about learning, not blaming. So, where we are is that we didn’t anticipate the emergence of an insurgency and tried to manage what appeared to be residual violence perpetuated by armed leftovers from the previous regime.

Having been established with the help of western democracies, the legitimacy of the government itself is in question. This is a consistent feature of insurgent IO (Information Operations, or their narrative); that the GIRoA is illegitimate, a puppet of the anti-Islamic west installed to subjugate the Afghan people to nefarious ends. Again, this doesn’t have to be true; just plausible in the minds of the receiving audience. In Afghanistan, this is plausible in the minds of enough people that this part of the insurgent narrative has not faded. It is also not diminished in the minds of those who have come into contact with corrupt elements of the Afghan government, whether it is ANP shaking them down for a few hundred Afghani at a checkpoint, a minor functionary demanding baksheesh for doing his job or a judge accepting a bribe to release a guilty man from the promise of justice.

All of this presents a significant challenge. How do the counterinsurgents bring the conflict back into the political end of the spectrum and out of the realm of warfare? Isn’t that the $64,000 question? It would seem if it were all that easy to define, we would have done it by now.

Much has been made of the provision of sanctuary to Afghan insurgencies by Pakistan. Whether it is completely voluntary on the part of Pakistan is open to debate, but there is no doubt that there is a certain amount of collusion on the part of, at a minimum, the ISI and the several insurgencies. Conventional wisdom states that an insurgency that has an external safe haven will win. Conventional wisdom is often roughly equal to pop-culture wisdom. It may have it right in general and still be deeply flawed.

It turns out that safe havens are certainly an enabler to insurgencies, but by no means a guarantee of success. In rural insurgencies such as those in Afghanistan, safe haven may be had one valley away from a relatively strong government presence. A more deciding factor in rural insurgencies is not whether there is a safe haven available, but if the government can actually assert its presence in these rural areas. In Afghanistan, it’s a combination of being present and being effective. Afghans love effective people. They refer to them as, “active.” If an Afghan says that a government official is “active,” he usually means that the official is effective, at least as far as that man is concerned. It’s effectiveness in a local context.

The failure to do this is more linked with failure for counterinsurgents than the ability of the insurgent to find safe haven.

We have been using data provided by Rand to explore why insurgencies end, and it turns out that they looked at the issue of safe havens as well. The Rand study examined 53 insurgencies that have been decided which included sanctuaries. Of these, 30 ended with government victories or mixed outcomes. That’s a 56% rate of a favorable or less than catastrophic ending with the existence of sanctuary. That’s opposed to 18 out of 21 when there was no sanctuary. What does this tell us?

This tells us that with the presence of a sanctuary, a successful or acceptable outcome resulted 8 percent less than two thirds of the time. This is a slight decrease from the overall outcomes discussed in the last post. But, in the absence of an insurgent sanctuary, the success rate of the counterinsurgents is much higher. The existence of sanctuary does not presage an insurgent victory.

Conventional wisdom busted.

The absence of sanctuary makes the counterinsurgent’s job much easier. So, lamenting the presence of sanctuaries in Pakistan is like crying because your car is the wrong color. It is what it is, but that does not mean that the insurgents will necessarily be successful. The presence and effectiveness of the government in rural areas is a much greater indicator of success or failure for counterinsurgents.

This does not mean that the Pakistanis should not be continuously pressured to step up. It means that safe havens are not a deal-killer. It also tells us where to focus our efforts. But, since we already know that insurgency is a competition to govern, it’s really no surprise that focusing on providing acceptable governance is really more of a key to success than whether or not the insurgents have a place to hide.

Insurgencies do not usually end with a bang. They usually end in a whimper. Statistically, according to Rand, out of 73 concluded insurgencies, 47 ended with either a government win or what Rand calls a “mixed outcome.” Rand considers a mixed outcome to be a negotiated settlement of the conflict. Government victories and negotiated endings are almost always whimpers. Insurgent success is usually with a bang. Almost exactly two thirds of insurgencies end in whimpers.

Galula described this effect, and described the political win as rendering the insurgent “irrelevant.” Galula pointed out that the goal of the counterinsurgent is to make the insurgent irrelevant and then the “true believers” are reduced to the level of violent criminals. When this happens, it is eventually a “win” for the government. But, I would consider a negotiated settlement a win as well.

Why would a negotiated settlement be a win? Let’s narrow down the bang and whimper thing. Insurgencies end with either the reintegration into the (non-violent) political process of the greater part of the insurgency, they end with a total changeover of the government (insurgent win), or they end up with the annihilation of the insurgent. Annihilation of the movements themselves are rare. The most recent example is the defeat of the Tamil Tigers by the Sri Lankan government. But there are few similarities and significant differences between the Tamil Tigers and Afghan insurgencies.

From what we see, nearly two thirds of insurgencies that have been decided ended either with reintegration of enough of the insurgency into the process to make further insurgency irrelevant or the total destruction of the insurgent. Let’s look at the first case, since the second is much rarer. Reintegration sometimes happened by the government responding to the legitimate concerns of the people and reducing the level of dissatisfaction (grievances) while simultaneously protecting both its own employees and the people themselves from insurgent influence. It sometimes happened through negotiating to bring the insurgents back into the political process. Either is acceptable, so long as the core values of the government are not breached. A combination would also work. The point is, when the political violence ends or ceases to be a serious threat to the government, the issues and contenders exit the realm of warfare and enter the realm of domestic politics. That is success, because the insurgency is effectively over, and it has not completely unseated the legitimate government.

The particulars of whether it is by reformation, negotiation or any mixture of both are irrelevant. The end result was the inclusion or re-inclusion of the formerly violent opposition into a civil political process, ending their participation in hostilities. That, truly is the goal of the counterinsurgent. Any other outcome is either indecisive or a loss for the counterinsurgent. Indecisive is when the fighting continues.

When the government wins, it is often not even apparent for some time. Governments usually win by a combination of factors that include some type of political reform. Either the government gets better, or it will likely lose. In a competition to govern, one path to success is to actually win in the area of governance. The violent component of insurgency can interfere with this to a great extent, so security is a key feature of success as well.

The most ideologically-driven insurgents will often “fight on” for years, but eventually become a criminal problem rather than a real political threat. Nonetheless, the apparent continuation of hostilities will often give the illusion of continued insurgency, but there is a point, which is very hard to describe or pinpoint, that insurgency degrades into a condition that looks more like Timothy McVeigh and less like Mao. That is the true tipping point, but it is often not clearly seen except in retrospect. That is a challenge for the government under threat of an insurgency, but it is even more of a challenge for the public support of international counterinsurgents; the home front.

National will is tested severely in counterinsurgencies. The will of the nation beset by an insurgency is severely tested, and the lives of its citizenry are at risk and often made miserable by the contest. The national will of nations assisting a counterinsurgency are also seriously tested, as we see in our own country. The significant delay in perception of when momentum actually shifts in a counterinsurgency is not a positive when it comes to maintaining public support for a course of action that includes active counterinsurgency by an international force.

The insurgency itself is also tested, and continuously so. Insurgents have natural strengths, such as the ability to remain largely difficult to detect. But they also have weaknesses or challenges to overcome, including morale, funding, recruitment, losses and sometimes even the basics like food and shelter. Weapons are not free, and neither is ammunition. In Afghanistan, it is remarkable that in many areas the insurgent can only afford to engage once every few days. This provides pressure on the insurgents to keep supplies coming. When governance improves and security is improved, local public support becomes harder to come by and information regarding the insurgents will begin to trickle in.

If things continue to improve, many pressures are put on the part-timers to quit showing up for ambushes. Finally, the local die-hards don’t quite quit at that point and probably never will. These long-term local engagements with insurgents are the real chess games in Afghanistan. They are like that weird 3-D game of chess on Star Trek, because each instance of the game will have three main components; military/security, governance and economic development. This game of 3-D chess is normally played out between locally savvy elder insurgents, generally one or more local GIRoA officials, and a series of Captains and Lieutenant Colonels who are on the ground for a year at a time. In the past couple of years, it has increasingly included USAID and State Department personnel. The insurgent competes in the military/security and governance lines and sometimes in the development line, although the insurgency itself provides little in the way of economic development.

By exception, in Afghanistan, poppy provides a significant example of how insurgents can provide development to serve their purposes. Of course, it’s not what we would like to see in long-term, sustainable development, but I submit that it is an example of insurgents manipulating the economy and providing employment opportunities. Insurgents may also control the access of humanitarian organizations to create the impression of providing services or development. However, there is no strong evidence that not providing social services has ever led to the failure of an insurgency. There is also no strong evidence that the provision of social services will result in a government win. Providing effective and acceptable governance, on the other hand, unarguably does often result in government wins. The provision of social services is a feel-good action that is not synonymous with good governance.

Statistically, the longer an insurgency is dragged out, the incidents of counterinsurgent wins actually increase slightly. But the loss or unreliability of foreign support has been a significant factor in a number of insurgent wins. Foreign forces engaged in counterinsurgencies are successful a little less than 50 percent of the time; if “government wins” is the measure of success as used by Rand. However, if we consider a success to include negotiated solutions that bring an end to insurgency, then the success rate of foreign active interventions is 12 of 17 or 70%.

As we’ve seen, about two thirds of insurgencies end with what could be termed success for the sitting government. While the outright collapse of insurgencies is included in that two thirds, more often it is by degrees and may include negotiated settlements. Quite often, it is months after the tipping point is reached before it is apparent that an insurgency is subsiding.

This describes how insurgencies have tended to work out, and a few examples of how these principles apply in Afghanistan. Obviously, we are trying to work this one into the two thirds of “successful” outcomes.
A success will sound more like a whimper than a bang. This doesn’t sit so well in a country that likes touchdowns, home runs and actually seeing someone win on “The Biggest Loser” or “American Idol.” Yet, that’s exactly what we are striving for. The next question is, “How do we fit Afghanistan into that successful, whimpering two thirds?”

There were some questions and comments left in comments on the last post, and they deserved response. I’d like to answer these questions and add some observations to the comments.

This would be appropriate to ask….is what’s happening in Egypt and what happened in Tunisia, insurgency?

I haven’t been tracking on Tunisia long enough to know if there was an insurgency there or not prior to the outbreak of popular demonstrations. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood has renounced violence and so they are not an insurgent group, although they have some of the hallmarks of being a nascent insurgency. One of these hallmarks is being outside of the normal political process; but Muslim Brotherhood candidates instead run as independents and hold seats in the Egyptian legislature, which makes them part of the political process.

Insurgency is where politics meets violence, but not all political violence is insurgency. For instance, Timothy McVeigh thought he was an insurgent, but he had no significant base of support and very little organized militant support. Instead of sparking a more widespread insurgency or, his dream response, a popular uprising, he was captured, charged, tried, convicted and executed as a criminal.

An organization like the Muslim Brotherhood could have developed into an insurgency quite easily, though. One of the reasons is because they have been banned by the Egyptian government on several occasions. This would push them towards not being able to participate legally in the political process. However, the members simply ran for Parliament as independents. The group still had political input and took part in the legitimate political process.

What appears to be happening in Tunisia and Egypt is every insurgent’s dream… sparking a spontaneous popular uprising. However, I see no evidence that either of these was sparked by insurgents. Opposition groups may have had a hand in their origins or propagation, but that is the difference between insurgency and popular uprising.

If the Egyptian uprising is quelled, especially by government violence against the people, without resolving the causes and conditions that sparked the unrest in the first place, an insurgency may (likely will) develop. If the government finds a way to address the grievances of the people and they return to their homes in a sign of acceding to the rule of the government, then change has been brought and the government survives. If the government does not succeed in assuaging the anger of the people, it may face either a popular revolt too powerful to quell or a launch into insurgency. This is a very delicate situation and could head in any of these directions based on the response of the government and particularly its choices regarding violence against the people.

Are insurgencies popular-led, or are they person-led?

Insurgency is that place on the political scale where one or more groups either fails to engage or is unable to engage in the “normal” political process and they become willing to kill in order to get their way. The willingness to kill is what separates it from just another opposition group.

Insurgencies must have leadership. The three things that exist to create an insurgency are grievances, leadership to direct that dissatisfaction into action, and a (real or perceived) weakness in governance. The weakness in government can be physical or ethical/ideological. Physical weakness is the inability to provide governance. Ethical/ideological weakness is the inability or unwillingness to govern in such a way that is acceptable to the people. This does not mean all of the people. It means that there must be a large enough portion of the people who are dissatisfied to support an insurgency. As we see in Afghanistan, that percentage can be quite small.

Most of the popular grievances will likely be based on ethical weakness, such as corruption or incompetence. However, the leadership of the various insurgencies are only taking advantage of these weaknesses in order to further their cause against the government, which is ideological. The higher up the insurgent strata we go, the more we will find ideological differences. Most people aren’t willing to kill over a bit of corruption in their local government. It can be brought to that point by leadership with either the promise of a new system that solves all of their problems (if those problems are severe enough) or a competing system that has the ability to dominate their lives on a relatively consistent basis. I believe that we see the latter in goodly areas of Afghanistan.

There are enough popular grievances against the existing government that some local residents are willing to throw in with the ideologically-based leadership. In Afghanistan, we find an ideological core that finds itself capable of competing for governance in many areas. This ability is often for lack of sufficient GIRoA (Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan) presence to actually govern. In the lack of opposition or competition, the presence of that government may have been sufficient, but there is by definition competition to govern in these areas; they have designated “shadow governors” and administrations to varying degrees. Therefore, the weak government presence practically invites successful competition. Often the first organ of competitive government in Afghanistan can be found in the form of courts.

The leadership can be based upon one main leader and a lot of subordinate leaders, or it can be based on a disparate group of leaders who begin to cooperate. Local leadership is usually necessary, as otherwise the violence has no focus and becomes disconnected from the political goals. The thing that separates an insurgency from simple criminality is that the violence is performed in pursuit of a political goal, so that linkage has to be there. In any real insurgency, there will be leadership. That leadership will often be more ideologically driven than the part-time members or casual fighters.

Being ideologically driven, they will be students of insurgency, and so they will often study relevant materials (open-source warfare, anyone?). One of the things that Moa did extraordinarily well was to teach how to incorporate the real grievances of the people into the ideologically-based narrative of the insurgent. The number of “true believers” will be much smaller than the whole, but the rest of the whole needs to be mobilized. If you are an ideological insurgent leader, once you have mobilized more people, then you can work on their ideological “education.” They are already on your side at that point. But they are not overwhelmingly drawn to your cause initially by ideology; you mobilized them due to their personal issues and concerns.

One of the strengths of insurgents is to identify these issues and concerns, real or imagined, and play upon those themes. They make it part of their narrative and work to convince the people of either the rightness of their cause or the inevitability of their victory.

Is an insurgency necessarily armed or can it be an action against, without again necessarily looking at a foreign power/ occupier or incumbent presidency (who by extension are supported by foreign powers)?

Insurgencies often do not start as armed movements. In Afghanistan, we have a previously armed group who were never dissolved. They melted away in the last days of the victory of the Northern Alliance, who were being assisted by American air power and combat forces, but they were never either annihilated or reintegrated in any way with the new government structure. Many did simply return to their homes or they never left them. Some, more recognizable to, for instance, American commanders had to flee. There a few FOBs built on land that is/was owned by absent Taliban leaders. One that I have visited several times, FOB Khogyani, was literally built around a Taliban commander’s house.

In any case, there was an armed cadre left over from the old regime. Some were “hiding in plain sight” and still intimidating their neighbors. Others fled to Pakistan, from whence some have returned and some find it more useful to remain safe. But they pre-existed the current government. After a period of latency, they reasserted themselves. The insurgency, like the counterinsurgency, has evolved.

But, by definition, insurgency opposes a government or other “ruling force,” like an occupation (which our forces in Afghanistan are not). The Afghan insurgencies oppose GIRoA and seek to overthrow it in favor of their own form(s) of governance. As opposed to an opposition group (which may grow into an insurgency), an insurgency has crossed the line into violence. Must they be armed? At a minimum, they must be armed with a fist. Upgrades are often necessary to compete with the government asserting its monopoly on violence, however. Our modern insurgents have graduated from fist to RPG, AK, PKM and IED.

Last, is popular-people-power the new future of war and how are governments prepared to settle these conflicts, if they are?

This is a little more of a higher-level question, but it goes to Stability, so let’s take a shot at it a little.

The short answer is yes; at least for the foreseeable future… but it isn’t really a new problem. It’s a problem as old as governments themselves, but with the added capabilities that globalization has provided to sub-national or trans-national organizations.

People will take a lot of crap in order to maintain the status quo, but they can only be pushed so far or kept down so long. When there is enough popular disapproval, or pain, they will potentially explode at the slightest spark; like what we have in Egypt right now. Popular-people-power is how we believe, as Americans, that government should be established. What we seem to forget sometimes is our commitment to “self-determination of peoples.” In other words, if popular-people-power rises up and takes down a government, and the majority of them want to install a king rather than elect a president, as long as the people consent to be governed in that fashion, isn’t it in our best interests for that government to actually govern?

In any case, popular-people-power has been the ascendant power for centuries. Stable governments are cautious of it and actively address the concerns of the people. At a minimum, they don’t make them miserable. Instability can occur where there are either ideological or ethical issues with the government. In areas where there are both, all hell can break loose. A sitting government can actively address the concerns of the people and potentially remain seated, but by the time there are revolts such as the one in Egypt, it may be too late. The key figure in that government may have become personally reprehensible to the people. Such situations are rarely successfully salvaged.

So, the “new future of war?” No, we see this throughout history, such as our own history, or say, the French Revolution. However, if we look at the future of war in the near term, do we see large peer-competitors looming in the immediate future who seem bent on taking actions such that we would have to oppose them with armed might? I submit that the only potential competitor of such a nature would be China, and there is no real evidence at this point that they will embark on a scheme of world domination by force of arms.

North Korea is another potential flash point for conventional war, but South Korea is much more capable than most give credit for, and I don’t believe that North Korea could successfully attack South Korea. I feel that this is unlikely to occur, though constant saber-rattling is to be expected.

We are currently faced by an ideological outbreak that is fueled in part by political, social and economic factors that drive people to look for answers. This is not an isolated instance of this. For some throughout history, the answer has been religion. For others, the answer was more secular; like Communism. Regardless, there are a bunch of people who are looking for answers as to why their situations suck; and what can be done about it. For this particular outbreak, the seekers are Muslim and for many, the answer found is in religion. For the hardcore ideologues, their interpretation of the religious basis for their solution includes a couple of ideas that make them remarkably poor world citizens… and a danger to the citizens of nations whom they deem to be a part of their problem; like us.

They are driven by an ideology that includes, as have some interpretations of Christianity that have been accepted down through the ages, the concept that God has commissioned them to conquer the world for Him. It is their duty. Does every Muslim subscribe to this theory? No, clearly not. But the ones who do are transnational ideologues who are not constrained by national identity. In fact, the weaker their host, the more they like it. Good examples of excellent host entities would be the Afghan government under the Taliban, the largely ungoverned spaces in western and northwestern Pakistan, Yemen and various African nations. Ungoverned or under-governed spaces are good havens for global insurgents.

You asked about the nature of warfare, but it’s not just a warfare challenge. It could also be considered a foreign policy challenge. We are learning in Afghanistan that these challenges are not always best dealt with militarily. Fully two thirds of the effort in Afghanistan is actually civilian in nature. Stability is not simply reliant upon security or the ability to project force effectively. It also depends upon governance and economic capacity.

Stability is a good thing for other nations, particularly well-developed nations, because we get blamed for the perception of “being in control.” That makes us a target, because we are seen as part of a system that keeps the governments in place that many consider to be oppressive, such as that in Egypt.

It appears that the future of conflict in the next couple of decades will be driven by non nation-state entities who have the ability to project violence on what was formerly a nation-state scale. But that doesn’t mean that it is just a military problem. As we are learning in Afghanistan, there are other tools of foreign policy that can be leveraged to avoid conflict altogether. Of course, cutting all funding for USAID, as proposed recently in Congress, is not going to make it any easier to deal with these issues through capacity building and raises the likelihood that the problems will progress to a scale where military intervention becomes more attractive.

The question is whether we choose to deal with potential safe havens for extremists via a shift in foreign policy oriented towards capacity building or whether we will depend on our intelligence community, the Department of Homeland Security and eventually punitive or regime-changing military action. Our recent experiences with regime change demonstrates how difficult, expensive and dangerous that can be.

I still cannot understand, even after seeing it firsthand in OIF, the ability of a small number of violent insurgents to cow whole villages into silence. It’s not like weapons are scarce in either Iraq of AFG, so why does it take so much for the people to fight back?

A good parallel to the situation in places like Afghanistan or Iraq is what happens in a neighborhood here in the United States when the neighborhood is beset by drug-related gang violence. As a matter of fact, police departments are studying COIN doctrine because there are so many parallels. The dynamics of insurgency are remarkably similar to the dynamics of organized criminality. The parallels even go to the point that strong drug-funded gangs sometimes actually compete for governance, becoming “the law” in discrete areas where even the police are intimidated, never mind the local population. Relatively small groups of armed individuals can cow entire communities with the threat of violence. Sometimes they can overwhelm local law enforcement with their capabilities.

The real difference between criminal drug gangs and true insurgents is that the gangs lack a truly political goal. This demonstrates the political nature of insurgency. But the dynamics are similar, and so we can see how a group of people can be cowed into submission by a much smaller group that is ready and willing to use violence as a tool.

Now add to that the conditioning that Afghan civilians have undergone in the past several decades. Survival strategies include avoidance of commitment. The average Afghan isn’t so different from the average American in a lot of ways, including a desire to just make it through the current troubles and emerge on the other side… whatever that may look like… still alive and with their family more or less intact. When the end result of taking a stand can include death, it may seem reckless to take that stand. Keeping those people on the fence is part of the insurgent strategy.

But none of that will work until you can clean out most of the corruption. Even clean cops won’t help if the lawyers and judges are dirty.

Great point, and very true. This is precisely the issue that causes the most heartbreak for GIRoA in many areas of Afghanistan. The Judicial system is a wreck, and you are right; clean cops who keep running into this wall of (in)justice get frustrated and often wind up taking part in this “race for corruption.” Every person who enters the system becomes a potential miniature gold mine. Those who can’t pay are eaten.

That is precisely one of the conditions that not only keeps the insurgency alive by convincing people, one family at a time, that the current government does not serve them. It is also that weak link that insurgents target to provide shadow government services, in this case courts. Courts that the people will willingly use because they are swift, enforceable and (relatively) incorrupt. Absolutely Maoist in strategy and behavior, the Afghan insurgency is finding that in this area they can easily out-govern the government.